Ravens' Super Bowl victory outshines the darkness

Super Bowl 2013: Ravens' win over 49ers outshines the darkness

Before the game began, the in-stadium scoreboard featured a segment on Hurricane Katrina, on how people were trapped in the Superdome in 2005. Over 20,000 people were eventually housed there for days with limited food and water, and limited sanitation facilities. It was, along with the national response to the Hurricane, one of the low moments in recent American history.

Then came another one, in a manner of speaking. In the first Super Bowl in New Orleans since Katrina, with 13:28 left in the third quarter and the Baltimore Ravens stomping San Francisco 28-6, the lights went out.

If you were into metaphors — about concussions, about income inequality, about the country’s abdication of one of its great cities, about the American empire — this was your moment. Also, if you specialized in electrical engineering.

But somehow, the NFL managed to outshine its own darkness. The game resumed after a 34-minute delay, and after a lightning storm of a second half, Baltimore held on for a 34-31 victory in Super Bowl XLVII in a game that, after a tedious start, became as strange and memorable a Super Bowl as you could possibly create. The 49ers, who came back from a 17-0 deficit in Atlanta in the NFC championship game, came within five yards of doing it again.

“It’s probably one of the best Super Bowls y’all ever see,” said Ravens safety Ed Reed, his hair tinged with grey. Reed, who intercepted Colin Kaepernick late in the first half, said he sprained both MCLs in his knees, but he refused painkillers. “I wanted to feel it,” he said. “I didn’t want to be out here and it just buckle down on me.

His team nearly buckled. San Francisco had spent the first 32 minutes of game time making mistakes — an illegal formation call on their first play that negated a 20-yard gain, an offside call on what was otherwise a drive-killing overthrow by Joe Flacco on third-and-10, a fumble at Baltimore’s 20, a spooked interception inside their own territory. On Jacoby Jones’s 56-yard touchdown with 1:45 left in the first half, Flacco underthrew the ball, Jones came back to it, fell down, got up, evaded corner Chris Culliver — the homophobic highlight-maker of the week, who had a phenomenally awful day — and safety Dashon Goldson, and cantered into the end zone.

With a nerveless Flacco tying Joe Montana’s record for touchdown passes in one post-season without an interception — he finished the post-season with 11 touchdowns and no interceptions and was named Super Bowl MVP — it was 21-6 at halftime, and Jones opened the second half with his 108-yard kick return odyssey, on his way to a Super Bowl-record 290 total yards. Writers started composing their game stories, without a doubt in mind. The biggest deficit ever overcome in the Super Bowl was 10 points, after all.

But then the lights were extinguished, and when they all were illuminated the game began to glow, too. The Niners punted, the Ravens punted, the Niners drove for a touchdown — Michael Crabtree, on a play with a missed tackle that looked a lot like the ones that never reached Jones earlier in the game that made it 28-6 — and after a stalled Ravens series, San Francisco’s Ted Ginn. Jr. ran a punt back to the 20-yard line.

Two plays later Frank Gore was in the end zone, and it was 28-20, and the Superdome was releasing a statement apologizing for the power outage. To which San Francisco presumably said, “never mind.”

Baltimore got the ball back, and Ray Rice fumbled on a swing pass in the flat, and David Akers flopped like a flounder and drew a penalty, which turned a missed 39-yard field goal into a made 34-yard field goal. It was 28-23 with 3:10 left in the third quarter. San Francisco had scored 17 points in 4:10 of game time, and they had an ocean of time left.

The Ravens drove inside the San Francisco five, but were forced to settle for a field goal. With 3:12 left in the first half Ravens coach John Harbaugh had called a fake field goal on fourth-and-9; his man got eight. It was an attempt to bury the game; it became three points that danced in the air.

After Kaepernick ran for the longest QB touchdown run in Super Bowl history — 15 yards — San Francisco couldn’t complete the two-point conversion, due to Ravens pressure. But it was 28-26 with 9:57 left.

Baltimore got into field goal-range thanks to an astonishing catch to Anquan Boldin on third-and-1 — Culliver again — and made it 34-29. Kaepernick had 80 yards to go, 4:19 on the clock, and only a touchdown would do.

Vernon Davis dropped an easy ball inside the 30 with 3:25 left, but Kaepernick hit Crabtree over the middle for 24 yards, and Gore ran 34 yards to the eight. They were so close. They got three yards on a run, missed Crabtree, called a timeout, had a pass to Crabtree batted down. One play left.

“We were very relaxed, we were very confident we were going to get it in,” said 49ers left tackle Joe Staley. “Five yards short. All the work we do in the off-season, the whole entire season, everything, comes down to five yards.”

And the Ravens sent pressure, heavy pressure off the edge, and Kaepernick lofted a pass to the right corner of the end zone just before he was hit. It was his third straight pass to Crabtree, and a Kaepernick audible; Jim Harbaugh said there was pass interference on the first of the three, and holding on this one. He was right — cornerback Jimmy Smith grabbed two fistfuls of Crabtree’s jersey, under his armpits, and the 49ers receiver couldn’t fight through it. The pass sailed too high, and never had a chance. The officiating crew made lots of mistakes, both ways, all night. This was just the last big one.

So Jim Harbaugh spiked his half-full can of Diet Pepsi into the garbage can on his way to the podium, and he said he wanted to handle the moment with class and grace, but he couldn’t help himself. He said the calls impacted the game, over and over.

“There’s no question in my mind that there was a pass interference call, and a hold on Crabtree,” he said.

“That was just something that happened,” said Kaepernick, who finished 16-of-28 for 302 yards, one touchdown and one interception, and ran for 62 yards and a TD. “I felt like I made too many mistakes for us to win.”

“It came down to the last play,” said Crabtree. “It was a lot of contact … but I don’t even want to say this, but if the ball was a little lower to give me a chance to make a play, I’m sure they would have called it. But it happened like that, man.

“It was a missed call.”

Those play calls will be second-guessed, too, but Baltimore defensive co-ordinator Dean Pees said he was expecting runs, and every pressure package was called for runs. Still, the read-option that was the soul of this offence was never called, even with mammoth Ravens tackle Haloti Ngota out with a knee injury suffered in the first half. Decisions were made, and they failed. Five yards.

So the Ravens — in the final game for iconic and divisive middle linebacker Ray Lewis, after losing four of their final five regular-season games, in a matchup between older brother John and his little brother Jim — escaped. Jim said he told John at midfield that he was proud of him, and John said the same; John said that moment was probably the most difficult thing he had ever been associated with in his life. “It’s a lot tougher than I thought it was going to be,” John said. “I just love him, obviously.”

Afterwards, Lewis continued his preacher act, saying “When God is for you, what can be against you?” And the Ravens yelled and sang and smoked cigars, and Baltimore native Michael Phelps joined them in the room, and Reed yelled towards safety Bernard Pollard “He’s naked! He’s naked!” And linebacker Terrell Suggs strolled by, saying to Reed, “You’re making Michael Phelps uncomfortable.” And Reed laughed, his beard as wild as ever, his hair a tangle of nascent tornadoes.

The 34-year-old future Hall of Famer is covered in scars and tattoos, and admitted this week that he is starting to forget things, and is not sure he will be back. He walked gingerly, sat at his locker with his shirt off, then creaked his body down to a kneeling position. He prayed at his locker for a minute, his wide back free of the scars that criss-cross his chest.

And he said he wanted to walk back to the hotel — he was born in neighbouring Jefferson Parish, and said he wanted to walk New Orleans style. “I wanted to wear the uniform back,” he barked. “But they didn’t let me. You ain’t gotta wait for me. I’m walkin’ back.” When he did walk, he walked crooked. If he leaves the league, it will be a bigger loss to the NFL than Lewis.

It was an exceptionally American Super Bowl, in the end. A volcano of money and hype, a massive failure, a cast of villains and heroes and families. Then there were the kids from Sandy Hook Elementary in Connecticut, where 20 children and six adults were massacred by a madman with an AR-15 rifle late last year, sang America the Beautiful. It was jarring how normal it felt to watch survivors of a child massacre singing about their country at the Super Bowl.

And then came the game, in this great American city, flawed and damaged and beautiful as it is. The day had begun with NFL commissioner Roger Goodell refusing to accept a link between football and concussions on Face The Nation. Maybe he knew that by the end of the day, nobody would remember a single thing he said.